In
The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

4 out of 5 stars

A History of Forensics and Poison

Écrit par
shalot
le
2018-10-10

The Fifth Risk

Auteur(s):
Michael Lewis

Narrateur(s):
Victor Bevine

Durée: 5 h et 10 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4.5 out of 5 stars
85

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
77

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
77

"The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis’ brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders.

4 out of 5 stars

Eye Opening.

Écrit par
Nqobile Nyathi
le
2019-01-18

The Uninhabitable Earth

Life After Warming

Auteur(s):
David Wallace-Wells

Narrateur(s):
David Wallace-Wells

Durée: 8 h et 33 min

Version intégrale

Au global

5 out of 5 stars
43

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
41

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
40

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.

5 out of 5 stars

An excellent book on the human impacts of global warming

Écrit par
Eric L, Montreal
le
2019-05-05

The Library Book

Auteur(s):
Susan Orlean

Narrateur(s):
Susan Orlean

Durée: 12 h et 9 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4 out of 5 stars
27

Performance

3.5 out of 5 stars
23

Histoire

3.5 out of 5 stars
24

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, “Once that first stack got going, it was good-bye, Charlie.” The fire was disastrous: It reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more.

2 out of 5 stars

I just could do it.......

Écrit par
cathryne mullowney
le
2019-03-02

The Book of Why

The New Science of Cause and Effect

Auteur(s):
Judea Pearl,
Dana Mackenzie

Narrateur(s):
Mel Foster

Durée: 15 h et 14 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4.5 out of 5 stars
16

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
15

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
16

"Correlation does not imply causation". This mantra has been invoked by scientists for decades and has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, sparked by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and placed causality - the study of cause and effect - on a firm scientific basis.

3 out of 5 stars

interesting but challenging in audio format

Écrit par
Amazon Customer
le
2019-01-01

In Pieces

Auteur(s):
Sally Field

Narrateur(s):
Sally Field

Durée: 10 h et 41 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4.5 out of 5 stars
106

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
95

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
94

In this intimate, haunting, literary memoir read by the author, an American icon tells her story for the first time, in her own gorgeous words - about a challenging and lonely childhood, the craft that helped her find her voice, and a powerful emotional legacy that shaped her journey as a daughter and a mother.

5 out of 5 stars

Raw & Truthful Autobiography

Écrit par
Cindy Susut
le
2018-12-05

The Poisoner's Handbook

Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Auteur(s):
Deborah Blum

Narrateur(s):
Coleen Marlo

Durée: 9 h et 14 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4.5 out of 5 stars
11

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
11

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
11

In
The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

4 out of 5 stars

A History of Forensics and Poison

Écrit par
shalot
le
2018-10-10

The Fifth Risk

Auteur(s):
Michael Lewis

Narrateur(s):
Victor Bevine

Durée: 5 h et 10 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4.5 out of 5 stars
85

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
77

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
77

"The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis’ brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders.

4 out of 5 stars

Eye Opening.

Écrit par
Nqobile Nyathi
le
2019-01-18

The Uninhabitable Earth

Life After Warming

Auteur(s):
David Wallace-Wells

Narrateur(s):
David Wallace-Wells

Durée: 8 h et 33 min

Version intégrale

Au global

5 out of 5 stars
43

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
41

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
40

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.

5 out of 5 stars

An excellent book on the human impacts of global warming

Écrit par
Eric L, Montreal
le
2019-05-05

The Library Book

Auteur(s):
Susan Orlean

Narrateur(s):
Susan Orlean

Durée: 12 h et 9 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4 out of 5 stars
27

Performance

3.5 out of 5 stars
23

Histoire

3.5 out of 5 stars
24

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, “Once that first stack got going, it was good-bye, Charlie.” The fire was disastrous: It reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more.

2 out of 5 stars

I just could do it.......

Écrit par
cathryne mullowney
le
2019-03-02

The Book of Why

The New Science of Cause and Effect

Auteur(s):
Judea Pearl,
Dana Mackenzie

Narrateur(s):
Mel Foster

Durée: 15 h et 14 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4.5 out of 5 stars
16

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
15

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
16

"Correlation does not imply causation". This mantra has been invoked by scientists for decades and has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, sparked by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and placed causality - the study of cause and effect - on a firm scientific basis.

3 out of 5 stars

interesting but challenging in audio format

Écrit par
Amazon Customer
le
2019-01-01

In Pieces

Auteur(s):
Sally Field

Narrateur(s):
Sally Field

Durée: 10 h et 41 min

Version intégrale

Au global

4.5 out of 5 stars
106

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
95

Histoire

4.5 out of 5 stars
94

In this intimate, haunting, literary memoir read by the author, an American icon tells her story for the first time, in her own gorgeous words - about a challenging and lonely childhood, the craft that helped her find her voice, and a powerful emotional legacy that shaped her journey as a daughter and a mother.

5 out of 5 stars

Raw & Truthful Autobiography

Écrit par
Cindy Susut
le
2018-12-05

Description

A New York Times notable book.

From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change

By the end of 19th century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. "Milk" might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by "embalmed milk" every year. Citizens - activists, journalists, scientists, and women's groups - began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, "The Poison Squad".

Over the next 30 years, a titanic struggle took place, with the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for food safety and consumer protection. Together with a gallant cast, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction revealed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then the most famous cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, one of the few food producers who actively advocated for pure food, Dr. Wiley changed history. When the landmark 1906 Food and Drug Act was finally passed, it was known across the land, as "Dr. Wiley's Law".

Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying "David and Goliath" tale with righteous verve and style, driving home the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption with a bracing clarity, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political challenges we face today.

poison squad

so informative. this book makes me appreciate how far we've come and realize how far we've yet to go in the pesticide ,/herbicide industries.

1 personnes sur 1 ont trouvé cette évaluation pertinente

Au global

5 out of 5 stars

Performance

5 out of 5 stars

Histoire

5 out of 5 stars

Chris Johnson

2018-10-23

I learned so much!

I never knew what used to be in our food. Amazing! She does such a nice job telling the story.

1 personnes sur 1 ont trouvé cette évaluation pertinente

Au global

4 out of 5 stars

Performance

4 out of 5 stars

Histoire

4 out of 5 stars

Dan

2019-03-17

Interesting & important book but misleading title

I was hesitant to read this book because of the title, which suggests the book is about people ingesting poisons as part of an experiment or study. That sounded like it might be a book about sickness, death and the horrors that come with being poisoned. That might be a very long slog. But the so-called "poison squad" is only one small part of this story. And while sickness, death and the horrors of being poisoned do make an unavoidable appearance in the pages of this book, the reader is not accosted on every page with such material. A better title for this book might be "Harvey Wiley and the Battle for Food Safety in America." Much of the book is about legal battles and political maneuvering at the dawn of food safety regulations in America. Some might find such material dry or tedious, but I found it fairly interesting. It certainly made me appreciate the relatively pure and wholesome food we enjoy today. One thing I did not realize was how long arguments over the safety of saccharine and caffeine have been going on. After so much discussion about this, it would have been nice if the book had included information about how these additives are regulated today.

My biggest complaint is the first chapter of the book, which is simply a list of the many people who make an appearance in the book, along with brief descriptions of each. There are dozens (or scores?) of people in this list and it seems to go on and on. I finally skipped this section entirely. I think including it in the audio version of the book was a serious mistake. It should have been provided as a downloadable PDF, or just skipped entirely. The audio book seems fine without it, and is certainly not enhanced by such a long and tedious list.

I thought the reading was more than adequate. But I did notice that a couple of paragraphs that required thick foreign accents seemed like they might have been read by a different narrator.

Au global

4 out of 5 stars

Performance

3 out of 5 stars

Histoire

4 out of 5 stars

Alec Drumm

2019-02-19

Hero of a forgotten episode in US science

The Poison Squad is about the career of Dr. Harvey Wiley, a chemist in the US Department of Agriculture who led the fight against food adulteration in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is incredible what was passed off as food and food additives in a period with no regulation. In the pursuit of a buck, manufacturers would sell "coffee" that contained no coffee and "soft drinks" sold to children that contained high levels of caffeine, morphine, and even heroin. They would add formaldehyde to spoiled milk and borax to spoiled meat that was then canned and sold to the US military.

In the present day the case for strong regulation seems clear but Dr. Wiley ran into a lot of opposition, even when the safety of common food preservatives such as formaldehyde and boric acid was scientifically questioned by his "poison squad" studies, which used a panel of human test subjects fed various doses of these ingredients. Such studies would not pass scientific ethics boards today. The Poison Squad describes the various tangles Wiley had with anti-regulation advocates at the DOA and with food manufacturers' lobbyists.

It's an interesting story, especially for scientists. The narration is not great however. The narrator speaks as if half the text is in quotation marks, especially chemical terms such as "formaldehyde". It sounds as if she is reading a legal text rather than a historical text.

Au global

5 out of 5 stars

Performance

5 out of 5 stars

Histoire

5 out of 5 stars

Dena

2019-01-30

Amazing how history repeats itself!

Listening to the ways that our lawmakers were owned by corporations in the past, and seeing examples everyday in the news of exactly the same horsesh*t happening today makes me sick to my stomach. We really have not progressed as a society. I loved this book for it's eye-opening ability.

Au global

5 out of 5 stars

Performance

5 out of 5 stars

Histoire

4 out of 5 stars

sullivbt

2019-01-22

great stuff<br />

good book, great reader. recommended for all interested in food safety in America. fast moving history

Au global

4 out of 5 stars

Performance

3 out of 5 stars

Histoire

4 out of 5 stars

Nicholas E. Ertz

2018-12-27

What's in your food?

This is a good lesson on politics that is germane even today. Here is the birth of the FDA. Without two things, it wouldn't have happened. The chief chemist (Dr Wiley) was the great advocate supported by a vast majority of consumers - who were vocal. The villains were big food business in cahoots with the lawmakers and the bureaucracy. You can be glad today that you don't have formaldehyde in your milk and many other things. Lessons here need to be applied to the gun laws and environmental protection. Read and learn.

Au global

5 out of 5 stars

Performance

5 out of 5 stars

Histoire

5 out of 5 stars

Amazon Customer

2018-12-18

Excellent blend of history & politics

This is a very well researched book. I found it captivating from start to finish.

Au global

5 out of 5 stars

Performance

4 out of 5 stars

Histoire

5 out of 5 stars

Jerry

2018-11-27

If you eat you must read this book!

Deborah Blum has done an extraordinary job in gathering the history of food safety and presenting it in a clear and lively manner. If you worry about the safety of today’s food and long to return to early times, you will be shocked by just how unsafe our food used to be, and how much good FDA has done over the years.

1 personnes sur 2 ont trouvé cette évaluation pertinente

Au global

4 out of 5 stars

Performance

5 out of 5 stars

Histoire

4 out of 5 stars

Curtis F. Chapman

2018-10-13

worth listening to, plan to buy a copy of <br />book

really glad I listened to this book, I would like to buy a copy in large print if it is available